


the life I've lived is only dust, the darkness comes for all of us

by astarisms



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Spoilers for Book 3: The Empire of Gold, You Have Been Warned, but from dara's pov, but its dara and its chapter 44, chapter 44 i think, i never know how to tags fics, im sure yall get the picture, its uhhh, so there are MANY MANY SPOILERS, this is straight up a scene rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27266878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astarisms/pseuds/astarisms
Summary: he has to make a choice.
Relationships: Darayavahoush e-Afshin/Nahri e-Nahid
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	the life I've lived is only dust, the darkness comes for all of us

He is familiar enough with death by now to recognize its embrace.

So desperate he was, to rip the symbols of his enslavement away, to destroy them and ensure his will, his freedom, his  _ choice  _ could never be stolen again, that he does not consider that the vile contraption Manizheh had melded to his arm and the curse binding his life to hers were the only things keeping him chained to this world until it is too late. 

The pain that had shadowed every movement, forced into the back of his mind as his body had fought and bled and killed under orders, comes rushing up from every crack, every crevice, until it consumes him. He feels the iron in his blood, pushing through his veins like a million tiny shards of glass, cutting him open. He feels the darkness in his head, blurring his vision around the edges, clouding his mind. He feels the fatigue in his limbs, threatening to pull him under.

He exhales, quietly. He remembers how it feels, to die.

Something moves in front of him, and he blinks, slowly, trying to make out the features of the face suddenly before him, the one that frequents all his dreams and haunts all his nightmares. She looks faraway.

_ I do not deserve to look upon her one last time _ , he thinks. Perhaps it is the beginning of his eternal punishment, that he cannot seem to focus on her now. But though it is difficult, to sharpen the bleary edges of her expression, he wonders at the panic, the sorrow there. He wonders if the iron poisoning his blood is making him delirious, because it is hard to imagine she wears such concern for his wellbeing, not after everything he’s done.

Whether or not it’s for him, though, he still finds himself wanting to take it away, to smooth the crease between her brow and blunt the fear in her eyes.

“Nahri,” he murmurs, and it sounds distant to his own ears. “I think we have done this dying thing before.” If she reacts, it is too subtle for him to see. There’s a moment where she says nothing, and concentrating on her takes more energy than he has left to spare, so he lets her fade again into a blur of brown and black and blue and gold. 

“What did Manizheh do to you? Dara—” Her fingers on his face, cool and gentle but urgent, insistent. He forces himself to meet her gaze again when she pleads with him, “Talk to me. Tell me how to fix you.”

It takes him a moment to process what she is asking. Fix him? She wants to…  _ fix  _ him? The thought is so baffling that he can do or say nothing but answer.

“Iron.” He can barely hear himself. “They poisoned me. I was dying, and she… and she…”

He trails off, suddenly overcome with the memory of what he had done. The physical pain had been numbing, but the guilt and sorrow hits him like another blow, one that hurts just as fiercely but brings him no closer to death. He does not feel like a savior, after finally forsaking everything he had ever known. He does not feel like a hero, for killing the woman he had followed, believed in, killed for. Despite what she had done to him and their city, he feels no relief with the knowledge that it is over. 

His eyes water, and he is surprised at himself when he feels them fall, having grown so used to the sensation of his own tears evaporating. 

“I killed my Nahid,” he finally continues, his voice breaking. 

“You saved us. You did the right thing,” Nahri says, firmly, though there’s an undercurrent in her voice, that same urgency when she changes the subject back to the poison. He feels her other hand on his wrist, covering the mangled, bloody, ruined skin, and though her touch is light, his vision goes white with pain. 

Fatigue weighs on him heavily though, threatening to pull him under, and he has not the energy to voice as such, or pull his arm away. 

But Nahri’s expressions flits between concentration, confusion, and back again, before she cries out, jerking her hand away from him. The fiery agony that had licked its way up his arm recedes, and the world comes back to him in uneven blotches of color. For a moment, he thinks it has been damaged permanently, when he cannot blink away the white spots, until he realizes belatedly that it is  _ snowing.  _

The crystals melt on his skin, in the loose, wild curls that have come free of Nahri’s scarf. She looks ethereal, this creature born of both fire and earth crowned in water and ice. There’s a wildness in her eyes, the stubborn determination that had enamored him so quickly, and not for the first time he thinks that she might have made an incredible queen, might still if she were so inclined to.

There’s another voice, somewhere away from them, and Nahri says something in response, but Dara does not know what they are saying. He cannot make out the words, does not care to, feverishly drinking in the sight of his love as she is now. If she is to be the last thing he sees before he descends into hell, for good this time, then he would commit the sight of her to memory, to cherish for the rest of eternity.

But then she is thrown away from him by an unseen force. There is wind, and hail, and he flinches at the cold—wonders at that, too, because the cold has never been able to bother him, who is made of fire, but he supposes it matters not anymore because he can feel it fading, can feel each individual flame that makes up his personage flicker and die, smothered by iron.

“Manizheh is already dead!” Nahri screams desperately, seemingly at nothing. But with the snow that no longer melts upon impact and the vicious weather, he remembers the slick, icy blade that she had threatened to kill him with, and he is struck with a moment of startling clarity. 

He reaches up with a shaking hand to touch his face. It has been a long time since he has been able to truly experience snow. 

“Peris,” he murmurs knowingly. 

“They aided us on the condition…” the other voice hesitates, and with some effort Dara tears his eyes from Nahri, to where Jamshid is still kneeling by Manizheh’s prone body. His breath hitches again, the sight of her putting another lump in his throat. Jamshid pulls Nahri’s dagger free from his mother’s belt, and rises. “...on the condition we got rid of you.”

And though it comes as no surprise—though he should, at this point, be quite acquainted with the long list of who and what wants him dead—the confession still makes him sway in place.

“Oh,” he says, because he knows not what else to say. The little hope that had kindled with Nahri’s attempts at saving him turns to ash, swept up in the peris’ wind and blown away. How else should he have expected this to end, but with his death? He has always been the one everyone wanted rid of—no one has ever had a care for those who gave the orders he was following. And then, because even from here he can see Jamshid’s hands tremble upon the dagger, because he can still see the panic bright in Nahri’s eyes, “I suppose I should not have said all those things about burning down the wind.”

“I can do it,” Jamshid offers. “I’ll be quick.” 

Even half dead, Dara does not miss the reluctance in his stance, the uncertainty in his gaze. He shivers, partly from the cold and partly from the horrid thought of having someone not entirely convinced of what they were doing trying to drive a blade into his chest.

“No, Baga Nahid, I cannot ask that of you. I—”

“Will you two shut up?” Nahri interrupts. “I can’t hear myself think!” She grabs the dagger away from Jamshid, and for a terrible moment Dara thinks that this is the end, that she is finally going to follow through. But then she shoots to her feet, her brow creased in furious thought, the wind whipping her hair and her skirt around her.

She looks like an avenging goddess. So enraptured with her is he that he hears none of the following conversation between her and her cousin. The bitter chill and the compiling snow he cannot muster the energy to brush away is numbing both the pain and all his senses, so he can do nothing but watch the way she paces, looks out over the city. He recognizes the little twist to her mouth, everpresent when she is deep in thought. He recognizes the restless motion of her fingers, twirling the dagger between them until she looks down at it, as if she had forgotten it was in her possession.

He recognizes that glint in her eyes when she draws her own blood on the blade.

Her mouth moves in reply to something Jamshid has said, but Nahri only turns her gaze outward, refocusing on the burning city. She flips the dagger in her grip, until it is pointed at herself.

And then, in a state of suspended disbelief, Dara watches as she plunges it towards her own chest. He chokes in horror, wanting to reach out, to stop her, but finding his limbs have stopped responding to him. There is black ash swirling alongside the snow around them, some macabre metaphor for life and death and her and him and his vision sharpens abruptly, hyperfocusing until all he can see is black and white and the red of her blood. 

It only lasts a minute. 

Jamshid crashes to his knees in front of her, blocking her from sight. Dara hears the tearful pleas, and with more dread than he possessed even for the flickering remnants of his own life, he waits, though he fears he has not the time to ensure her wellbeing before death takes him. 

There is a ripple of raw power, potent and intoxicating and familiar but not, because it is a purer form of magic than he has ever known himself. And then there is Nahri.

If he had thought her ethereal before, it is nothing compared to the otherworldliness of her now. Eyes wide with awe, he can do nothing but stare. She is all but glowing, her wild curls loose around her face, her eyes blazing. Though he does not remember losing the battle with his own body, though he does not remember slipping, he cannot help but think they are both of them dead.

He knows not where he is, if she is here with him, only that it is fitting for wherever he has been sent, since she is both his greatest love and his greatest torment. To keep her company in Paradise, or to be tortured by all the ways he has failed her, for eternity.

“Creator be praised,” he breathes, when he can salvage some breath. “Are you… are we…?”

“Dead?” she guesses. “No, not quite.” She kneels, but already he feels the pull. The sounds of battle fade, as if there is cotton in his ears. His vision softens and blurs at the corners, and even though Nahri takes up the space before him, it is no longer her that he sees. Over her shoulder, the bloodied stone of the palace melts into the calm, lush green of a garden. 

He hears a tinkling laughter, faraway but louder than anything happening around him. He sees the flash of a black braid, darting around one of the tree trunks.

“I think I see it,” he whispered. “The cedar grove. My sister....” 

“Do you want to go to her?” Nahri asks, reminding him faintly of where he is. There’s something broken in her voice that she tries to mask, like glass swept under a rug. “I can heal you, but I won’t bring you back against your will. Not again.”

_ I will hide. Come and find me, Daru!  _

The words are faint, whispered on the wind. He knows not whether her voice is real, or a hallucination caused by iron delirium, or a manifestation of what he wants most to be used against him later. But whatever it is, it lures him closer to death’s doorstep. To be reunited with his family, finally…

Then Nahri’s words register, even as he continues to stare into the garden, trying to catch another glimpse of Tamima. She is offering him a choice? The choice to go to his sister, when it has been stolen from him so very many times? He can hardly fathom it. 

“I do not know,” he finally says, tearing his gaze away from the afterlife, meeting the black of Nahri’s eyes, wild with grief. With all that he has stolen from her, how does she still mourn him? With all that he has done, how does she still give him this? “I do not deserve to choose.”

Her eyes grew damp, though her tears do not fall as she reaches up to touch his face. His breath shudders, and he longs to cover it with his own, to hold her there, but moving feels like a mountain of a task and he cannot. 

“Your Banu Nahida is telling you to choose.” It is a command, and Nahri wears it so well that he might have laughed, so proud of who she has become, if only he weren’t presently dying. “You’re free, Dara,” she says, her voice breaking, and Dara feels the fractured words like a blow. He is free.  _ He is free.  _ “Free to go. Free to stay.”

Free to finally fulfill his promise to Tamima. Free to finally live as a man, without fear of war or enslavement or power-hungry Nahids.

_ Tamima, _ he thinks in anguish as he looks into the garden again, spotting her head pop out from between trunks in the distance. Would she be horrified at the things he had done, the past he had repeated, the one that had killed her in the first place? Would she, too, not be able to look at her older brother once learning of his crimes, just like their mother had? Would she wonder at his selfishness, if he chose the afterlife without so much as an attempt to right his wrongs?

He closes his eyes, the garden disappearing from view, and takes a deep breath. He knows what his decision must be. He knows what he  _ wants _ it to be, despite the part of him that grieves that his sister must wait another few millennia for him. 

Dara is not yet ready to die. He has been alive for 1400 years, but he has barely lived.

He opens his eyes, meeting hers—hope and dread war in her gaze. Haven’t enough people grieved because of him?

“Save me,” he pleads, breathless. “Please.”

“Oh, thank God,” Nahri chokes, looking closer to tears than he has yet to see her, and he cannot help but marvel again that she should feel so strongly about him still. She had come here with the intention of killing him, and now…

She drops her hand from his face, putting one over his thigh and the other over his heart.

And then there was pain again, worse than it had been before as the iron changed course in his blood, surging through his veins in search of the exit. He might have screamed, but the agony only lasts moments.

He catches himself on the ground, and Nahri’s hands on him steady him as his fire returns, washing over him in violent waves, but she pulls away quickly when his mortal form melts away, so as not to be burned. The power radiating off of him as he heals knocks her even further away. 

She stumbles, then climbs to her feet, looking out over the city again. 

That fire is back, sparking in her black eyes like kindling, and her jaw sets in grim determination, her own magic spilling off of her in a torrent that might have been nauseating for anyone else to experience. She weilds it well.

And then it’s his name on her lips again, torn from her as she holds herself in check just lost enough to tell him what to do. To keep the city safe.

He needs not be told twice. It is all he has wanted to do for fourteen centuries, and he lets the next breeze take him. There is the heaviness still, at seeing what has become of Daevabad, at knowing that it is his fault, but for the first time in a long time, he does not let it consume him. He feels… hopeful.

He is lighter than air, after all.


End file.
